Your own ego is the only trap that I think you can fall into.

Titanic I thought was the most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life. Another film that I think is equally bad was American Beauty. So badly acted and directed. But people like that.

I love fishing. You put that line in the water and you don't know what's on the other end. Your imagination is under there.

I never knew what I wanted, except that it was something I hadn't seen before.

I've never had a big hit movie. "MASH" was probably the biggest. I don't make those kind of films, and I never have. I wish each one of them would just do billions of dollars worth of ticket sales, but they never do and they never will.

If something works for you, you continue to do it. I did a bunch of pictures for 20th Century Fox when Alan Ladd was over there, but I set the budgets so low that they'd approve and I'd deliver the film. They would have no say in it, which is the kind of arrangement I liked.

I don't know what "Altmanesque" means, though I suppose I'm flattered by it.